


All My Luck is Yours

by PassingInTheNight



Category: American Gods (TV)
Genre: F/M, post-season two
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-22
Updated: 2020-03-22
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:41:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23252614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PassingInTheNight/pseuds/PassingInTheNight
Summary: She couldn’t leave him there at that house in the city of death, abandoned west of the sunset of his home, not now.
Relationships: Laura Moon/Mad Sweeney
Comments: 9
Kudos: 35





	All My Luck is Yours

It got dark faster than she thought it would. There had been a ridiculous hope that maybe the sun would stay up a little longer. Like it knew how the dark of night would stutter the bravado that had led her to steal a whole body.

Although really, of all the thefts in her life, this one might be the most justified. She wouldn’t abandon him here on his own now, especially not now.

So she hefted his body on to her shoulders, started walking, and didn’t stop for a long time. Not once did anyone come across her lugging the body of someone literally a foot and half taller than her. Maybe it was the death magic of Cairo. Maybe the gods can act as powerful and mysterious as they want, but it just happened no one was out that night.

In the beginning, she was determined, she had the sense of a plan. But she was carrying the literal dead weight of someone she hadn’t thought would actually die, so, soon her mind focused to a point out of necessity and the tap of her boots on the pavement was all she could hear. Repeated motion, the ability to repeat the motion. It wasn’t lulling or comforting or calming, but each time it meant she was just a little further from all those fucking gods creating their own drama. Another step.

They acted as though former belief in them meant they deserved to be powerful now. Step. But when they have that power, what do they do with it? Nothing. Step. They ask if you want to see the body of a person that should have no meaning to you. That’s been an asshole at every turn. Step. You ask if that person really is dead. Maybe the gods have intervened and Shadow was wrong. Maybe. But this god says yes, they decided he was meant to fall and not get back up. Step. The denial you’d let coat the gold coin in your stomach, well it starts to erode, to decay. And he wasn’t an asshole at every turn, he wasn’t. That’s what the gods do. Step.

 _I thought we were going to save somebody_... but she couldn’t, she didn’t know how anymore because he would be the one she’d ask about it. And he’s gone.

One foot after the other. It had seemed as though she’d been walking with abandon, with no goal, but she became aware of the natural light on her. She was chasing the setting sun in the West. Deep in her bones, an anxiety of the finality of the sun disappearing behind the trees on this day settled uneasily. He’d died yesterday and the sun had already set on his death, but the echo of lore of the ages was seeping into her and she couldn’t fight the tide for a moment. He was so far from his original home and the pain of this lost time almost made her turn around, just to walk in the direction of the Old Land.

However, as the sun set, the urge didn’t last and she stared in awe at the beauty of air fret with golden fire, at the sunlight in rays cast long over the street. Like she was just taking a walk and if she got out of the shadow of this tree, then she’d feel the sun on her skin. It would be warm and kind and maybe everything would be alright. He would be alright, maybe just a step behind, taking a moment to enjoy the last sunshine of the day. It would light his fiery hair, he’d stand tall with memories of far off lands and the power of the sun they chased, and he’d be a leprechaun, a god-king, a bird... Mad-fucking-Sweeney. They’d keep on their way and it wouldn’t matter where she was going, just that he’d hopefully be there too.

She felt a shock. Her peaceful dream of the future, it had changed while she wasn’t paying attention, and it now wanted for nothing of the distant past other than for her to not be dead anymore. She’d only recently found a pocket in the world that calmed her fear of life and all it entailed. She just needed to catch up to the sun and maybe it could grant her some more time there.

But she carried on walking all the same and when she stepped out from under the shadow of the tree, all that was left was the night. It was so dark and heavy. And it laughed in her face that the day she finds him dead was the day she was wishing he was here. In that dark, the death magic of Cairo shook its head at the foolishness of man, at her too; the gods of the dead lining the street, just out of sight. She didn’t even know who they’d be there to get. The dead carrying the recently dead through fucking Illinois, or maybe it was Missouri now. He’d probably have thought this was funny. The universe certainly found the irony laughable.

And then all she could feel was the presence of him, the overwhelming size and that uncomfortable lack of life in his body. She walked but had no mind of it, the dark and death watched silently and she didn’t care. She wanted to drop him and walk away. But the thought of doing so gave her nausea that shouldn’t be possible. Who else was going to sit quietly in a field of flowers with her? Who else would tower over her and make her feel safe when all she’d ever chased in big guys was the fear their ability to overpower her elicited? Who else would know, know what she wouldn’t? Who else? Who else?

Suddenly, Laura Moon was intensely aware she was standing in the street in the middle of America, holding the dead corpse of some guy she’d met less than a month ago, herself a dead corpse barely held together by a magic coin. Then she’d gotten a potion to resurrect herself and all it needed was two drops of the blood of love. But she hadn’t even asked Shadow for the blood. She hadn’t even thought to once she finally saw him. She did, almost impulsively, scrape some from the huge pool of blood she could barely look at on the floor of the shed.

If the death gods were still there and still laughing, then Laura was laughing louder. She was a short time away from never again being alive in this life and she’d somehow found herself a way to ruin this dead wife life as well.

Broken from her reverie by the eerie whirring of a flashing neon sign, she sees she’d happened upon another motel in another town of which no one has ever heard. Well, their thing started at a motel, maybe it should end there too. So, Laura finally steps from the street, trudges her way up to the motel office, props Sweeney against a wall out of sight of the person in the office, and goes to pay for kind lodgings.

Once she’s awkwardly gotten them both into the room, she lays him on the floor and sits on the ground near his feet while resting her back against the foot of the bed.

He doesn’t look like he’s sleeping. He looks gone, devoid of all that was him. And she hates it, to a degree her general apathy might not have allowed in the past.

In an aggressive outburst of energy, Laura bounds up from the ground and goes to the bathroom. She lightly washes her face, sees that Sweeney had stopped bleeding long enough before she’d picked him up that her dress wasn’t completely ruined with blood, generally fixes herself for whatever she’s about to do and walks back to her seated position.

The potion is in her hand before she knows she reached for it and it feels weak, incapable of what was promised. She has no idea how it works. Maybe it was only meant to work on her. The Baron might have made it in a way that it actually had to be swallowed and not just poured down the throat. Perhaps the blood has to be fresh and not from the person who would take the potion. After talking to Bilquis, she’d immediately gotten the blood from her boot into the bottle, but maybe it’d been too long. The magic of gods and everything else was a wisping flame that might just be an orange piece of paper floating in the wind, glinting in the light.

No matter, the thought wasn’t even complete in Laura’s mind before she was pulling the stopper out of the bottle. She paused for a moment, hovering over him, and lightly laid her hand along the side of his jaw and his neck. Maybe the Baron knew that if Laura had any blood running in her veins, she too could have used hers for this potion. But this would have to be enough. And with that, she poured the potion into his mouth.

She would wait. She would wait to see if there was any motion, anything at all. She wouldn’t leave him again.

Nothing happened right away and the hope started to die, but she couldn’t let him go without a fight. Sitting back in her preferred spot, she nudged his foot and wished his eyes sought out hers, now lightened by impossible tears. Her shaky sigh was not the breath of life, but she would try to give him his. And if he ever was to listen, she must speak.

 _Oh...I’ve never known the whole story. It’s always been bits and pieces, most of which I didn’t care for at the time._ _I thought I only knew you through lore and lies and the exhalation and the downfall of a god. But it must be more now._

 _This can’t be the end for you. If we keep gods alive for centuries and centuries on the whisper of a story, then I will make sure you get more time, more sunrises and sunsets. Because gods_ _are made in the image of people, and you believed that was a good thing, not a weakness._

_I met you only a little while ago, yet I feel it now, and it feels like I’ve known you for so long. But I think I might have to go soon. I don’t want you to watch me fall down and not get back up, and I’m sorry I can’t give it to you right now, but you’ll have to come get your coin. It isn’t mine and it’s time you stop stumbling through life setting things on fire. Maybe when you find me though, put me back in the ground and let me sleep. I’m much too tired these days._

_I believe in leprechauns._

_I believe in you._

_And it’s time for you to get back up and finish this fucking battle._

At that, she couldn’t have spoken more if she wanted to. There wasn’t anything left to say if he couldn’t respond and even if he could, she wouldn’t want the answer.

But for all the horrible things in the world, Laura Moon watched a shudder run through Sweeney Todd’s tall frame as it began awakening from death, with a timing that would make the devil smile. For fear of somehow interrupting the seemingly slow process she'd started, Laura resisted hugging him like she refused to in the field of flowers. Instead, she nodded, stood up, wiped her eyes of the last tears she may ever cry, and closed the door behind her after striding out. Laura only made it a few feet before slowly walking back to the door and leaning her forehead against it. A shuttered breath in, a shuttered breath out. Before the next minute passed, she was walking along the road with a thumb raised up and ready to mindlessly travel to wherever she would die for the last time. Where all his luck couldn’t keep her eyes open any longer.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed it. I desperately love that there are so many people writing fic that openly ignore the fact that the show is probably going to become a train wreck and Mr. P. Schreiber has been doing a whole other show during filming of AG (as far as I know). Anyway, drop a comment if you feeling this. Thanks again. Also, I deeply apologize for my genuine battle to write in one consistent verb tense. Hope y’all are doing alright in these weird times.
> 
> For anyone that happens to return to the story: I have come back to edit this work many times. None of the overall events changed, but I can’t stand to leave certain wording as it was. I doubt I’ll do much more to it now, but I wanted to give fair warning.


End file.
